4 ms·

$62,500 per song? How earth did the jury "determine" this. Seems like someone pulled out a number out of their you-know-what!!

• tzs 16y ago
  Well, how much would it have cost per song to purchase from the copyright holders licenses to do what she was doing? A license to make and redistribute copies, with no restrictions on how many copies can be distributed, and no requirement to track how many copies are distributed or to whom, for a one-time lump sum payment is probably going to be rather expensive.
  • Splines 16y ago
    I understand what you're saying - but I doubt including a README with the contents "you agree to not distribute this file and delete it when done listening" would do little in minimizing any potential fines.
  • ericd 16y ago
    This is a silly argument, though - she was not distributing in perpetuity, and the result is way out of proportion with actual damages. If a total of 100 song copies were downloaded off of her computer, and market price of the songs are $1.30 on iTunes, the damages were no more than $130. In that case, it is as if she deprived them of a maximum of $130, and it should be treated as theft of that amount, at worst. Thieves don't pay back 10000x what they stole, they go to prison. If she's very unlucky and it was downloaded 1.5 million times off of her computer (doubtful - Comcast would have shut down her computer for going way over her bandwidth quota, and the ratio of sharers to downloaders is quite a bit higher than 1:1000-1:1000000), then maybe it's justified. This is even without factoring in the likelihood that those people would have bought that music otherwise, rather than downloading in bulk and listening to a small percentage, as is common.
    • tzs 16y ago
      So when three of the four major labels were refusing to give Apple permission to distribute DRM-free music on iTunes, but were allowing Amazon to distribute their music DRM free, would you argue that Apple could have just gone ahead and distributed the music without permission, as long as it went ahead and paid the labels the same that Amazon pays them?
      • cma 16y ago
        So when I start throwing rocks and break one window a day of your 5000-window house and announce this intention, when you take me to court and stop me with an injunction after 5 windows, you can go ahead and sue for the repair costs of 5000 windows?
  • teilo 16y ago
    This is a variation of the tired old argument which assumes that every pirated copy represents a lost sale. Hogwash.
    • tzs 16y ago
      No, it is a completely different argument: if you do something that requires a license, and you don't have a license, the damages reasonably should be at least what a license would cost. Otherwise, there would be no point in ever buying a license. You'd always be better off just using the item without permission, and then paying the penalty if caught.
      • teilo 16y ago
        And your argument is nothing but a legal fiction. There is no such thing as a license to give away copies of as much copyrighted music as you want.